turn their backs on them, build their churches in aristocratic
neighborhoods mostly, and compete with one another for the favor of the
rich and powerful. They cannot understand how it is, that churches and
ministers do not exert themselves more for the extinction of
drunkenness, gambling, and licentiousness, and for the suppression of
all trades and customs that minister to sin. It startles them to see to
what a fearful extent the churches have allowed the power of the press,
which once was all their own, to pass out of their hands, into the hands
of selfish, worldly, and godless adventurers. These matters admit of
explanation, but there are many to whose minds the explanation is never
presented, and there are some whom nothing will relieve from perplexity
and doubt but a grander display of Christian zeal and philanthropic
effort, on the part of the churches, for the regeneration of society.

4. Then the religion of Christ is not, as a rule, presented to men in
its loveliest and most winning, or in its grandest and most overpowering
form. As presented in the teachings and character of Christ,
Christianity is the perfection of wisdom and goodness, the most glorious
revelation of God and duty the mind of man can conceive: but as
presented in the creeds, and characters, and writings of many of its
teachers and advocates, it has neither beauty, nor worth, nor
credibility. Some teach only a very small portion of Christianity, and
the portion they teach they often teach amiss. Some doctrines they
exaggerate, and others they maim. Some they caricature, distort, or
pervert. And many add to the Gospel inventions of their own, or foolish
traditions received from their fathers; and the truth is hid under a
mass of error. Many conceal and disfigure the truth by putting it in an
antiquated and outlandish dress. The language of many theologians, like
the Latin of the Romish Church, is, to vast numbers, a dead
language,--an unknown tongue. There are hundreds of words and phrases